Caravaggio

 

 

by Miguel Osuna

 

 

On making a painting as a homage to another painting.

Before anything, I want to thank Pio Monte della Misericordia for allowing me the opportunity to participate with my work in this historic place.

Talking about the unique opportunity of working in residence in a place like this, I mention how I feel I have been invited to participate in a dialog that has been taking place for the longest time.

Within the context of this dialog, one of the conversations that are still taking place is the

collection, growth and care of this group of art works.

How does one approach a project of this kind? The privilege of being able to say that one of my pieces can live in this place is enormous. The idea, as you well know, is to create a work that is inspired by, or makes a reference to the work we have here.

To avoid being frozen in terror, the first thing I tried to do was to spend the most time possible in the company of the painting and try to forget the hand that made it.

Familiarity implies confidence, confidence eliminates fear.

In the normal course of my work, the pursuit of an idea is followed by a rationalization of how to translate this idea to a visual realm, then come the practical considerations of how to execute this idea.

In this case, the idea is already given. A painting in relation to another painting.

The question that remains: How?

For me, in my work of the last few years, the pigment itself has become not just a component, but an important element by itself. Surface, texture, reflectivity and, obviously, color. With respect to the color, I let myself be guided by the master. In my humble opinion, by means of light effects, composition, position and representative presence, Caravaggio gave the lady a primary role. The lady is dressed in that color, a sort of pink, or what I call “blushing” beige. And that is the only place in the painting where I see that color.

Bingo! The palette is defined.

The work I have been developing lately is, in essence calligraphic. Done with pencils, pens, brushes or even found objects. One of our primordial ways of communication, besides language itself, is the graphic representation of the language itself. Graphic gestures made with the hand. With the free hand. And, as human as we are, we cannot circumscribe the complexity of an idea and limit it to the semantic content. Much of the emotive content is poured on the way these characters, or pictograms, or simple marks on a tablet are done.

In my present work, I try to imprint this emotive content with calligraphic elements that are

stripped of the alphabetical and even syntactic component, connecting the emotive content

directly with the hand.

Following this principle, soaking myself in the emotivity I discern in the Caravaggio piece, and using that particular color hue, I will try to create a group of graphic gestures that will hopefully express the effect that Michelangelo da Caravaggio communicated to me.

M. Osuna